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Jan. 3, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
47:20
20240103_piers-morgan-uncensored-un-women-make-trans-model-
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Piers Morgan Uncensored Live 00:01:56
Hello, I'm Douglas Murray and welcome to Uncensored.
Tonight, the latest champion for UK women to the UN is, you've guessed it, a biologically born male.
Women's groups are outraged, but should they be?
We'll debate.
And after Harvard's first black president is forced to resign over allegations of anti-Semitism and plagiarism, we'll ask if merit needs to matter more than box-ticking diversity.
And I'm joined by one of the world's leading personal growth gurus, Chris Williamson from the Modern Wisdom podcast.
He'll be talking with me about whether New Year New You commitments are just so much nonsense.
Live from the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored, where it's day two of me, Douglas Murray, filling in for the great man.
I'm standing in for Piers because he's claiming he can't get into work and that's, well, it's because of the weather.
Yes, it's just far too sunny in Beverly Hills to leave so soon after Christmas.
Here's another Piers post from yesterday, by the way, where he seems to be reading Arnold Schwarzenegger's new book, a reminder, if not a subtle warning to us all, that he'll be back.
This week, we're looking at the big themes which will dominate the global agenda in 2024.
But what I didn't think would be on that list was the subject of darts.
That's all thanks to 16-year-old Luke Littler, who has reached the final of tonight's World Championships, which you can see and hear live on our sister channel, Talk Sport.
Now, people are saying little Luke looks a lot older than his years.
Gender Confusion and Reality 00:12:11
But I think that's unfair.
After all, if we're willing to accept middle-aged men arriving on small boats, self-identifying as teenage boys, then why shouldn't we question, or not question rather, a homegrown darts prodigy?
Besides, we can't all have the youthful visage of a cherubic angel like young Piers Morgan.
Or is that his prettier sister?
Anyhow, talking of gender confusion, this story has also caught my eye today.
Meet Munro Bergdorf, a model who has been controversially appointed the UK champion at UN Women, a charity that seeks to improve the lives of women and girls and promote equality within civil society, the corporate sector and government.
Well, it's controversial because Munro was, to put it in the modern parlance, a signed male at birth.
Or born a bloke, as others might put it.
17 women's rights groups have signed a letter to the charity complaining about a transgender woman representing them on the committee, especially since part of their written objection is that Munro has in the past objected to women making references to our female bodies.
Although Munro did once set up a nightclub called the Pussy Palace.
So empowering, don't you think?
It was Groucho Marx who said, I don't want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.
Well, I'm not sure any woman should want to belong to a group that would have Munro Bergdorf as their champion.
But there's another good reason all women should rip up their membership of this group, in my humble opinion.
Take a look at their reaction to the revelations of sexual violence by Hamaz in October.
Is there a reason though, Sarah, that you can't specifically call out Hamas?
UN Women always supports impartial, independent investigations into any serious allegations of gender-based or sexual violence.
And within the UN family, these investigations are led by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights.
It took the group a full 57 days after the Hamas attack to make any official statement.
And even then, that was to condemn gender-based atrocities or mass rape, as the rest of us call it.
It seems to me that this group really has a problem with language and also with reality.
So Munro Bergdorf and the UN Women's Group probably deserve each other.
Here to debate here in the studio in London are talk TV contributors, Esther Kraku and Paula Roan-Adrian.
Thanks so much for being with me both tonight.
What do you both make of this story?
Let's start with you, Esther.
It just seems amazing to me that of the 33 million or so women in the UK.
A biological male as their choice.
That's quite an interesting one.
You know, I always think what would happen if we ignored people that are trying to force their reality onto us.
Because I don't believe we have an obligation to validate falsehoods and delusions.
Certainly the law doesn't.
Public policy doesn't.
And I don't think individuals in a country that lives with, as we say, we have free speech, I don't think we have to either.
But this insidious drive now has infiltrated so many aspects of society.
I think on the one hand, I personally cannot be bothered to constantly be outraged by this because I know there's some people that will never have their minds changed, which is fine.
But on the other hand, if we ignore it, what will happen in the future?
How will our children be raised?
How will we be able to tackle it if it becomes like a, seems like a cancer that will never go away?
That's the bigger problem I have here.
Clearly, Munro burged off.
You know, this person is very famous in the UK.
And this is a trans woman.
That's a biological man that has believed that they were born in the wrong body.
That's fine.
But you're insulting women, effectively, by saying this is the only person that can represent women, 33 women, 33 million women in the UK.
What do you think about that, Paul Kiss?
I think they're not saying that she's the only one, but she's the one they've chosen of the 33 million.
That does seem slightly jarring, doesn't it?
No.
So my position is, of course, that the right person is chosen for the job.
And if the right person is Munro, then Munro is the right person.
I'm not fearful or don't feel challenged or don't feel that I'm in competition with Munro.
Let me just make it clear.
I don't know who Munro is personally.
I've only read about her.
I read the letter that was written to the UN women's group, UK group.
And what I understood from the letter, the concerns were twofold.
The first was that Munro was not pro-women.
And the second was that Munro had written a number of historical tweets that were racist and that were homophobic.
Now, for both of those reasons, if they're right, then I would agree.
Because clearly then Munro would not be in a position.
Let's just remind ourselves of exactly what it is.
Because if you're choosing anyone as a diplomat, a representative of an organization, I mean, you wouldn't want somebody who, for instance, said in, called somebody on Twitter in 2012, a hairy barren lesbian, said she wanted a gay basher TV star and called the suffragettes white supremacists.
I mean, it's not the best outreach thing, is it?
I mean, no, but can I just say, when we talk about outrage and when we talk about a cancer, I believe that the outrage and the cancer is somewhat somewhat misguided.
Let me explain to you why.
I'm intrigued that we continue to talk about trans women.
I'm intrigued.
Well, why do you think it is?
Well, I tell you why it is.
It's because there are certain groups in society that are happy for what are two marginalized groups to invite.
Okay?
And let me explain to you why.
Because If this amount of energy was expended on why it is we still have a gender pay gap of 14.3%, if this energy was expended on why it is that professional sports women are not being catered for in the same way in terms of their commercial contracts, why it is that they're getting beaten up by lesser male ideas.
Why it is that Serena and Vinny's women are not genuine.
That's a disingenuous argument.
That's a disingenuous argument.
Then I would kind of understand.
You're pretending not to know why.
There is a reason why.
There's a reason why we're fixated more on the issues to do with trans women than trans men.
Because you don't have sporting organizations validating trans men in male sports because it doesn't exist.
There's a reason why there's all this sort of controversy around trans women in female prisons because it doesn't happen the other way around.
That is the reason why.
And to pretend or to juxtapose that against other legitimate issues is completely disingenuous.
Do you know why this person, Monroe Burgdoff, who was born with a penis, cannot represent women in this country?
Because this person will never understand gender-based violence because this is a biological man.
They will never understand how it feels as a woman to have a biological man in your toilet because they're a man.
I agree with both of you a bit.
I certainly agree with you, Paul, and I would rather never talk about these issues ever again.
But unfortunately, as we all know, they keep coming forward because, I mean, kind of deliberately provocative things like choosing a biologically born man as a woman's representative just comes up.
I'm going to bring in the, we've got coming from Nashville, Tommy Lehren, from the Tommy Lehren is fearless podcast.
Thanks so much for joining us, Tommy.
What do you make of all this?
Well, listen, I think we need to start calling this what it is.
This is an absolute slap in the face to actual women.
And I refuse to use the term biological women.
I refuse to refer to myself as a biological woman.
I am not a woman.
I'm not cisgender.
I'm not any of these other things.
I am a woman.
And I thought that the feminist movement was cultivated to stand by women, real women, and female empowerment and women's rights and our spaces and our sports.
But unfortunately, that movement has been hijacked by what I call the rainbow mafia.
And now this whole trans movement has decided that their one goal, not about making equality for trans people or awareness for trans people, has been about overtaking women's sports, women's spaces, women's rights.
And the fact that there are now certain activists that have completely abandoned what should be the actual feminist movement in favor of this rainbow mafia, to me is laughable.
And if they're going to call me transphobic for saying that, in the words of our swimmer Riley Gaines, I would say, well, then I guess that makes you a misogynist.
We're not using these terms, these labels, these definitions anymore.
We're going to call things like they are.
We're going to speak with science at the forefront, and we're not going to play these games anymore, at least here in the United States.
Well, whilst I've got you there, Tommy, in the United States, it does seem that the United States is sort of ground zero for a lot of this stuff.
And I wanted to take us on to another story because California, I know you're in Nashville, Tennessee, a very sensible state, I'm sure, but over in the slightly crazier state of California, a new law has come in.
I couldn't quite believe this when I read this.
A new law's come in saying that all large top toy retailers in California have to have, quote, gender-neutral toy aisles.
And apparently this is because instead of having a sort of clear aisle for boys' toys and a clear aisle for girls' toys, that's a bit too, it's a bit too, I don't know, it's a bit too obvious.
It's a bit too, well, the 20th century and every century before that.
And so apparently now, you know, sort of children and their parents should be able to sort of skip around the aisles and choose whatever toy is most suitable for their gender identity.
What do you make of this law?
And law it is.
Well, I'll tell you, I did live in Los Angeles for three years before I fled to Nashville, Tennessee.
And I'll tell you, there's a lot of problems in California.
Homelessness, taxes, regulations, illegal immigration, drug use, open-air drug markets, filth on the streets, human feces on the streets, needles on the streets.
And I would think that gender-neutral toy aisles would end on the last of list of priorities for Governor Newsom and the rest of the Democrats that control that state.
But alas, we've discovered that that is their priority.
Fining retailers that have already been through enough with the COVID lockdowns and shutdowns, finally regaining their ground after that time, also inflicted on them by Democrat politicians.
And now they're going to be fined if they don't have gender-neutral toy sections.
I'd also remind people that in California, because they're felon-coddling laws and policies, you can actually steal $450 more than these retailers would be fined.
And that would be considered a misdemeanor.
So let's just put that in perspective.
You can shoplift, and that's essentially the same thing as a toy aisle that's not gender neutral.
That's California priorities for you.
I don't know why everybody hasn't fled that state.
Thank you, Tommy.
I've got to bring that back to the studio.
Paul Ness, I think the idea here is that we shouldn't impose gender identity.
Performativity, I think, is one of the bizarre terms that is used.
Here's something that slightly subverts that argument.
There's a study that just came out.
The most popular toys for girls on Amazon, jewelry box, Princess Castle, and karaoke microphone.
And you don't need to guess which sex these are the most popular toys for on Amazon.
Stunt car, dartboard, walkie-talkies, and toy soldier army swat helmet.
I think the point is, and it's a shame that they had to bring in a law, but I think the point is, is that it's okay if your son wants a pram.
And if your son points to a pram on the shelf, buy your son a pram.
It's no big deal.
That's been very generous.
If your son wants to dress up as a Disney princess and says, I want to dress up as a Disney princess, let your son dress up as a Disney princess.
If your daughter, conversely, wants to get a Toy Soldier Army SWAT helmet.
Harvard President Resignation 00:12:10
Exactly.
Absolutely.
It's no big deal.
The thing is, I think that's a very generous assessment because these kinds of people are known for thinking that everything has somehow been is a result of social conditioning.
So I don't think they're mandating this because they say, it's okay if your son wants to wear a dress.
Not in my house, but okay.
It's the point that they actually think it's okay if your son wears a dress.
It would be fun.
They actually think young people are socially conditioned to this, even though it goes against all the scientific data on this.
The reality is men like, well, boys like things, girls like people.
And that's just the reality of how we're genetically predisposed.
And that you say that, that you think or that you think that people are stressing that they're social conditions in the same way that you think that somehow your son will wears a dress.
It's just not happening in my house.
Well, that's kind of clear.
I'd like to thank both my guests in the studio.
Thank you, Esther and Paul.
And thanks very much, Tommy, for joining us all the way over in Nashville, Tennessee.
Now, up next on Uncensored, after the resignation of Harvard University's first black president, I'll be talking to Ayan Hersiali, who says it's time for the whole diversity, equity, equity, and inclusion agenda to be kicked out of major institutions, once and for all.
Welcome back to Uncensored, with me, Douglas Murray, standing in for Piers Morgan.
Reaction to the resignation of the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, has been predictably divided.
For some, the university's first blackhead deserved to lose her job after accusations of plagiarism and a completely shambolic performance at a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism last month.
And Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment?
Yes or no?
It can be, depending on the context.
What's the context?
Targeted at an individual?
It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals.
So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct, correct?
Again, it depends on the context.
It does not depend on the context.
The answer is yes, and this is why you should resign.
Amazing.
All depends on the context, apparently.
Anyway, some people are ignoring that and are claiming that there's actually a sinister racial agenda in this sacking.
The civil rights activist, Reverend Al Sharpton, said that Gay's resignation is, quote, an assault on the health, strength, and future of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Well, my next guest has done a lot of thinking about this subject, and she says it's time to make merit matter more than liberal box ticking.
Delighted to welcome to Uncensored Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute, the author and activist Ayan Hersiali.
Ayan Hersiali, thanks so much for joining us on Uncensored.
Tell me...
Douglas, thank you for having me.
Tell me first of all, what do you make of the Reverend Al Sharpton's claim there?
This is all about race, apparently.
It's not all about race.
It's about the mediocrity and mafia that he represents so well and that he has profited from for so many years.
And I think it's time that we ditch this diversity, equity and inclusion movement that is really all about dismantling and degrading our institutions.
They're about expunging our history and they're about indoctrinating kids at school.
And it starts at universities and it goes beyond that.
And I'm really one of those people today who is celebrating the resignation of Claudine Gay.
But I think I'm also realistic enough to say that is just at the surface.
The problem is much deeper.
It started at universities.
It has spread to corporations.
It has spread to lower ed, you know, from K to 12.
It's everywhere in America.
And I think it's time that we take a good look, a good deep look at what's going on.
And this is just the start.
I agree with you.
I mean, this is why it matters.
Sometimes people think that what happens at Harvard is just a bit of Ivy League stuff.
But it isn't, as you say, because it's going out all across the rest of America, indeed the rest of the world.
I mean, well, the rest of the West anyway.
Plenty of people in China are getting on with things anyway.
But just going back quickly to Claudine Gay at Harvard, I mean, I find it pretty startling that this is a woman who became president of perhaps the most elite university in America.
And she published no books.
She published 11 articles in her career.
And it's turned out that much of them were just plagiarized, stolen from other people.
So how did she even get there in the first place?
She has 50 allegations of plagiarism against her.
Douglas, my grandmother would not trust Claudine Gay to herd her goats.
This woman could not be the president of Harvard.
I don't understand how this happened.
And yet I do.
And people like me, you know, Helen Placros, James Lindsay, there were so many of us early on who saw this years and years ago and who kept on saying, this thing is rotten.
It's not going to go away.
We were told so many times, oh, it's universities, you know, radical ideas emerge in universities, but over time they disappear.
No, the rot is deep.
And this woman, one small representative of it, she's gone.
And my big worry, Douglas, now is that they're going to say, okay, this woman is gone.
The one at Penn University is gone.
And, you know, we're going to have a new president.
We're going to maybe have a new board and move on.
And I think that would be such a squandering of opportunity for real reform.
Let me give you another couple of reactions to her resignation this week.
Ibrahim X. Kendi, the author of a book called How to Be an Anti-Racist, which I think is the wrong title for it.
You should just take anti-out.
Ibram X. Kendi said in the wake of Claudine Gay's resignation, racist mobs won't stop until they topple all black people from positions of power and influence.
And Ida Bay Wells, Nicole Hannah Jones, one of the authors of the 1619 project for the New York Times, said after the resignation, academic freedom is under attack.
Racial justice programs are under attack.
Black women will be made to pay.
I mean, there are still people clinging on to this, aren't there, Ayan?
This sort of somebody must be defended simply on the color of their skin and all the claims of plagiarism, which would get any student chucked out, and all the inability to condemn racism, which would normally lead to condemnation.
All that sort of brushed to one side, because what really matters is just the color of somebody's skin to these people.
Ibrahim X. Kendi is a racist.
He is a certified racist.
Everything, all the work he has done, all his actions are about promoting racism.
And so this man is being outed.
What he stands for is being exposed.
And I think what's happening now is because of his exposure, the kind of, they have this magical, I'm looking for the word, the spell that they've been putting on people.
Just by calling them places, they would get what they want out of them.
They would get the positions, the stature, the money.
I think all of that's going to disappear.
So they are now coming out in panic and saying, oh, my goodness, everybody is a racist.
Black people will be.
No black people will benefit from this.
Finally, those individuals who are black, who have worked hard for their degrees and the positions they have and their businesses, those people are going to shine.
And these like mafia, mediocre mafia people, they're going to be exposed and hopefully be taken to where they belong, which is the dustbin of history.
Now, I couldn't agree more, but Ayan, just tell me, I mean, it's so much wider this for the whole of society, isn't it?
Because, I mean, once these ideas of, you know, prioritizing people because of their race or their sex or their sexuality, once those things are pushed to the forefront, then all the issues of merit get inevitably just pushed to the back.
And that just has a trickle-down effect on every aspect of society, every job, every recruitment process.
You're a, if I can say so, I mean, you're an amazing example of merit in your own life.
You escaped a forced marriage, went to the Netherlands, learned Dutch, which isn't easy, became a member of the Dutch parliament and built a career for yourself in Europe and then America.
Why is it though that this sort of merit-based system, why do you think it's become so unpopular?
Because surely, as you say, it's the best chance anyone has.
It's not unpopular, but this is a very loud minority that want to get ahead only for themselves.
And then they're claiming they speak for all blacks, for all women, for all gender identity minorities.
They don't speak for any of these minorities.
They do this so that they can get ahead.
Ibrahim Exkendy speaks for himself.
Claudine Gay speaks for herself.
She doesn't speak for me.
I think it's very important, Douglas, to note that there are disparities in our societies.
There are large groups of people who are left behind.
And it's extremely important to tackle that.
And the way to do it and the way to lift up the people who are left behind is to make them a part of the values that make us come ahead.
The values of hard work, the values of community, the values of commitment, of responsibility, of getting up in the morning, of lifting yourself up by your bootstraps.
That I think is what for me, America is all about.
And we can do that without degrading the standards of what has lifted up everyone out of poverty.
And this is what these people are doing.
And I think it's time that they're exposed and called out.
And this is just the beginning.
Let's get down to where the hot is.
I couldn't agree, well, but finally, let me just ask you.
I mean, this seems to have come about because of an idea that everything's a zero-sum game.
You know, if, for instance, if women are going to be advanced in society, men have to be punished.
You know, if there's going to be more visibility of gay people, you've got to punish straight people and degrade straight people.
And that if you're going to make more opportunities, or not even more opportunities, just put people in positions of more prominence in American society or British society, you've got to sort of beat up on white people a bit.
And all the studies have shown in recent years in America and in Britain, there was one again just a couple of years ago, that this means, among other things, that you have the left behind of white men, young white men, who nobody's speaking up for.
Absolutely.
You hear that all the time.
You don't want black men to move ahead and leave white young men behind.
You want everyone to advance.
And I think in order to do this, we have to be really honest about the frameworks that we have, the framework of equal opportunity, not equity, as they call it, which is the E in the DEI, which is about equal outcomes.
And we know where equal outcomes, we know where hardcore socialism and hardcore communism, we know where they lead.
They lead to more disparity, more division, and they lead to the gulags.
And that's what these people are all about.
And I think I'm just really grateful that the conversation has now begun and that we can A, address disparities and fight racism, fight misogyny, stand up for people with gender dysphoria and not have their suffering used against them so that people like these crazy transgender activists can get ahead.
And I think, Douglas, I mean, happy new year.
NHS Strikes and Brexit 00:08:12
I think we are starting the new year off on a good place.
Well, I agree, but who'd have thought that Harvard was the place which DEI went to die?
Thank you very much, Ayan Hersiani.
Welcome back anytime.
And next, tonight on Uncensored.
As we hurtle towards a UK election this year, the Conservative Party deputy chairman, Lee Anderson, says the Reform Party poses a bigger threat to the Tories than Labour.
Is he right?
We'll debate with the PAC right after the break.
Welcome back to Uncensored.
I'm delighted to be joined with my pack of Talk TV contributors, Esther Kraku and Paul LaRone-Adrian.
And they're joined tonight by the Mirror's Associate Editor, Kevin Maguire.
Now, there's quite a bit to cover with you.
First of all, I wanted to ask you this comment by Lee Anderson, the Tory MP.
Let's start with you, Kevin.
He says that the reform UK, which some people might not have heard of, presents a bigger risk to the Conservatives than the Labour Party at the next election.
Do you agree?
No, but he's under threat in his own seat in Ashfield, where he fears the Reform Party was the Brexit Party, was UKIP.
Right-wing party will take votes and he'll lose his seat.
There's no doubt the right of British politics is fracturing between the Conservatives and reform, and that will help Labour.
But no, Labour's a bigger threat.
Kierstam is a bigger threat.
By the way, Lee Anderson also said that reform is, he didn't just say they're a bigger threat to the Conservative Party.
He also said they're a bigger threat to the country at the moment than the Labour Party.
Yeah, and he also said he agrees with 80% of them, yeah.
Well, I think we're underestimating, we're talking about, you know, very safe blue seats potentially swinging reform, which is, you know, there's merit there.
But we're also underestimating Red Wall seats that did vote for Brexit, that have traditionally voted for restricting immigration, that have, you know, voted against the excesses of globalization.
Where do you think they'll go?
They'll probably also go reform.
That wouldn't surprise me.
Because the thing is, as well.
Because the thing is, hold on.
They'll be ideologically less inclined to go towards Labour because they see them either as the same as the Tories or even worse.
I mean, if you think about it, if you're a traditional working-class voter from the north, what do you have in common with any of the two big parties?
At least reform is talking to them.
That's the difference.
Well, as I said, I think actually this step back to Labour for a lot of the Red Wall voters, we probably would see that come in.
I think they've been so let down by Brexit.
I think they'll understand that reform won't be able to give them what they probably want.
And what this country needs actually is stability.
What this country needs is...
But if we just look at it electorally, reform, when it was the Brexit Party, didn't stand in Conservative seats.
It's a Thatcherite right-wing party.
Now, if it's going to stand in Conservative seats as well as Labour seats this time, which it will, then it is going to be a threat to the Conservatives.
It will fracture that right-wing vote, and that will be good for Kierstam and Labour.
Just straight electoral levels of the UK.
I think the bigger concern is we not knowing as much about reform's policy positions as the other parties.
That's the issue, because we know reforms, you know, political history has been mainly focused on Brexit.
Where do they stand on other issues like social policy?
You can't just stand up and keep talking about Brexit in the next election.
I mean, you know, eight years of it.
I'm lamenting.
The people who talk about Brexit now tend to be remainers.
They're the ones who define themselves.
They feel they lost.
It's proved to be a disaster.
While a lot of people who voted for Brexit like to avoid it now because it hasn't turned out the way it was promised to voters.
But they're a very anti-migrant party reform.
I think that's where they will hit it hard.
I don't think that has any effect in the Labour heartlands.
Only a little.
I think you've got to be more than that.
And it feels that is their only real selling point.
If you look at coastal communities that have demographically shifted quite radically, like Norwich and all these areas, you can actually see the sway of reform.
My issue is I don't know where they stand on anything else.
Education, you know, housing, social policy, infrastructure, all of these things.
You know, we can't have one party that says something that we like and think, oh, they're going to save Britain.
That's not good enough.
Well, we do deserve to know.
Let me take you on to another subject.
Junior doctors in England are preparing to stage the longest strike in NHS history with medics due to walk out for six days in the escalation of the RAW and it's starting today.
I mean, where do you stand on this?
Let's start with you again, Kevin.
I mean, it seems to me, you know, today people have been called to be told that their appointments, their operations have been cancelled.
Heart operations, life-saving operations for a lot of people.
Who do you have sympathy with here?
Oh, I've got huge sympathy with patients, but any industrial dispute, and I've covered industrial disputes going back to the late 80s.
It takes two sides to talk.
And both sides, the government is saying it won't talk while strikes are going on.
Well, it's got to swallow its pride and talk.
And the doctors have to go into those talks.
We talk about junior doctors.
They are 40% of the doctors in the NHS.
This is in England.
Scotland settled.
Wales, there may be disputes later, and there is some balloting going on in Northern Ireland, which predominantly an English problem, where the Conservative government has handled relations in the NHS terribly, which is why you had the nurses' strikes and you had the consultants.
They are asking just quickly, they are asking with junior doctors.
40% of the workforce, and the NHS, which is the fifth largest employer in the entire world, they are asking for a 35% pay rise.
Now, I think a lot of people watching will think 35% pay rise is quite chunky.
In order to make the key, the key lands with public opinion because that's when you'll know whether strikes are likely to be successful.
So, we've known that since strikes have begun over the last couple of years, that the strikes that have received the most public support have been nurses' strikes.
Now, they've settled, right?
Because after COVID, they only offered a 2% pay rise, and the public were rightly outraged.
And then, at the bottom of that, is university lecturers because they are pumping out useless students and making our lives hell.
You cannot keep this going and expect the public to have sympathy with you when you're asking for a 35% pay rise because that is impossible.
No one, not even the private sector, gets that.
But, Esther, it's a lot more complicated than that.
We know that they're asking for 35%, but what they're also saying is, don't give us 35% today because that won't happen.
We understand that you can't give it to us today, but in terms of making up our pay, that is what that figure would account for.
What other employer, if you said, if you said, I want a 35% pay increase, you don't have to give it to me right away, but you have to give it to me quite soon.
I mean, it's Douglas.
That 35% is going back to 2008.
So, a 15-year period.
They took a bigger hit.
The value of their earnings dropped more than ambulance crews, more than NHS workers, of course.
Inflation came in as well.
And it's actually now down to 26.
The government gave them 8.8% without settling the strike.
Their frustration is with their union as opposed to the government, because we've had successive governments since 2008.
And I think that the bigger point here is when you compare it to other countries like Australia, like the US and Canada, all these countries say they earn significantly less.
20% of their income goes towards their pension as well.
So they have a very good package.
Last words follow.
The government are using this as a tactic as a ploy.
If they wanted to talk to the junior doctors, they could do.
They did with other doctors.
They did with the barristers.
They just refused.
Because they weren't asking for it.
What they want to do is they want the NHS to be run down.
We are watching the demise of the NHS.
We need to support the junior doctors.
Maybe it needs to die.
We are always told that we're facing the demise of the NHS.
And we have got a particularly incompetent government when it comes to hawker dying.
Maybe the NHS not done.
We also quite regularly have very incompetent governments, Kevin.
So that's not an excuse either.
I want to bring you on to the really crucial issue of the day, which is, of course, darts.
Luke Livler began his PDC World Darts Championship debut, hoping simply to win one game.
But now the 16-year-old Sensation will face Luke Humphreys on Wednesday evening tonight in what is anticipated to be the most watched final in the tournament's 31-year history.
Life Ambitions and Resolutions 00:12:48
Luke is 16.
We've got a photo, I think, somewhere here.
Yep, there you go.
There's 16-year-old Luke.
I don't believe that.
I still find that kind of amazing.
We've got, though, by way of comparison, it's very important to everyone viewing they can see another 16-year-old.
Here's a 16-year-old, I think it's Piers here.
16?
No, he wasn't.
More like six.
Well, I wouldn't like to see the two of them in a title fight, I tell you that.
I think I know who my money went beyond.
Hang on, it's worse, it's worse.
Hang on, we've got a young Kevin.
Oh, God, the hair Kevin.
Kevin, Kevin, come on, explain yourself.
My dad used to call that girl's hair.
I have a very long black.
This is horrifying.
I have PCSD.
Look at that.
Hang on.
You look exactly the same.
You look exactly the same.
That's horrifying.
I was asked to produce a photograph of myself at 60 and I said I've burnt them all.
There was no chance at all.
Anyway, thank you very much to all of you in the pack.
It's been great to have you all here in London.
Up next on Uncensored, I'll be talking to one of the world's most popular personal growth gurus, Chris Williamson from the Modern Wisdom podcast about whether New Year, New Year resolutions are all a load of old nonsense.
That's after the break.
Welcome back to Uncensored.
So, how are you doing with your New Year's resolutions?
Do you even make any or are they broken already?
Well, fear not, because my next guest is the king of self-improvement, having built an online community of over one and a half million subscribers who follow his talks and debates on modern wisdom.
I'm delighted to welcome all the way over from Austin, the podcaster and YouTuber Chris Williamson.
Thanks so much for being with us, Chris.
I appreciate you.
Thank you for having me.
The roles are reversed for once.
I know.
It's my turn to interrogate you.
Now, look, I want to ask you, first of all, just on a light-ish note, New Year's resolutions, do you do them?
I do.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of New Year's resolutions, and I have been for a while.
And what are they?
Stop using my phone so much, go to bed on time, don't eat as much sugar.
It's the basic things that everybody else does.
The basic ones are the ones that are most important.
What about you?
Have you got any New Year's resolutions?
I'm trying to give up dry January, but anyway.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I always break them.
But there is something to be said for the sort of reset, isn't there?
The sort of January reset.
I mean, Christmas is a kind of gluttonous season, probably always was.
But yeah, resetting your body, for instance.
The best time to take a break from drinking is when you've got a massive hangover.
And I think the best time to take a break from being a gluttonous pig is straight after you've just been one for a while.
But I understand why people have got questions around New Year, New Me.
It's become a bit of a meta-meme.
And by the end of January, about 80% of people have already given up on their resolutions.
We're on the 3rd of January now, so maybe people have already started to peel off.
And then only 8% of people actually achieve their New Year's resolution.
So I understand why people have skepticism around it.
Is this something which is even useful?
There was a TikTok psychoanalyst and clinical social worker who said that she had disdain for resolutions on January the 1st because they're an unrealistic fantasy that will inevitably make you feel like a failure.
Now, if we have lost the ability to be sufficiently brave to be able to take on eating less sugar or going to bed on time, I worry for the conviction that we have in other areas of our life as well.
Yeah, quite well said.
I want to, you know, tell us a little bit about yourself, Chris, because you've had an extraordinary journey in your career.
You started off, as you say, as a self-declared ex-professional party boy.
You now have this amazing following online ad off.
You speak, among other things, to a lot of, I think I'm right in saying so, to a lot of young people.
And it seems to me that one of the reasons for that is that there are very few people in our society who can give kind of guidance.
There's a lot of lost young people in our societies in Britain, America, and the West.
And they're looking for not just sort of, you know, dietary advice, but they're looking for sort of mental nurture and perhaps even sort of life nurturing.
They want to do something with their lives and nobody's giving them any advice.
Well, as you have written about the grand narratives that we relied on for a very long time, many of them have collapsed.
We find ourselves in a world which is hopelessly incompatible and unmatched to the evolutionary place that we found ourselves in 100,000 years ago.
And people quite rightly are looking for, okay, so what does this mean?
I have all of this freedom.
I have all of this time.
I have all of this opportunity and optionality in front of me.
And between all of these different things, where should I go?
It's confusing.
There's this great idea called the paradox of choice by Barry Schwartz.
So if we were to go back 50 years and you were to go and buy a pair of jeans, you would go into the store and there would be one type of jeans in a couple of different waist sizes and you would walk out.
And maybe they weren't the perfect pair of jeans that you wanted, but you felt satisfied with your decision because what else could you have chosen?
Now you're going to buy a pair of jeans and do you want boot cut or skinny or stretched?
Do you want them to be bleached?
Do you want them to be gray?
Do you want them to be cropped?
Any decision that you make with a suboptimal pair of jeans is now no longer because of constraints from the environment.
It's because of you.
It's because of your inability to make an appropriate decision.
And this is where a multiplicity of options sounds like it would be great.
It would open up so many different avenues for people.
It means that you can choose exactly what you want, the pair of jeans in a lifestyle perspective.
But look at what actually happens.
People end up feeling trapped, paralysis of analysis, and they feel less satisfied with the decisions that they make.
So more options aren't always the solution.
And quite rightly, people look for guidance to help them navigate through whatever this new terrain is.
When people ask you what the big things were in your life that made you sort of, you know, I'm not saying your life was in disorder, but to get your life in order, to get it to the place you are now, a huge following, very successful, just finished a major tour.
What do you see as being the turning points in your own life?
So I, for most of my 20s, was largely an adult infant.
And I think a lot of young guys might be able to resonate with that, that I was succeeding in a way that maybe people in the UK would consider success with a lot of freedom and being able to party and go out with your friends and stuff.
But it wasn't fulfilling me existentially.
And that meant I had to make some changes.
Some of the biggest ones were sleeping with my phone outside of my bedroom.
I found that I was chipping away at my sleep every single night, losing 30 minutes or an hour.
And if I couldn't sleep, I could roll over and use it.
And people say, but I use my phone for my alarm clock.
Whatever will I do?
Dude, radio alarm clocks have been around for like a thousand years.
Just go and get yourself a radio alarm clock.
Another massive change that I made was I went sober for six months twice, and then I went sober for a thousand days.
I didn't drink that much.
I wasn't a massive drinker, but I found that it really focused my time and my attention and my consistency.
And basically getting a hangover is like electing to make yourself ill very chronically for about 24 or 36 hours, depending on how old you are.
And that helped.
Helped me to have more consistency, time, energy, attention to spend on things that I care about.
So yeah, I mean, if people were able to do phone outside of bedroom and no alcohol for January, I think that by the end of it, they will find themselves in a much better place.
You've interviewed on your podcast some of the biggest brains on the planet.
I'm not going to name any names.
But you've been on three times.
Yeah, I wasn't raising that.
But genuinely, what do you think the most important things are that you've learned from people?
What do you mean with the things that have really just stuck with you?
There's no such thing as success without consistency, no matter what it is that you want to do, whether it's build a business, lose weight, be richer, become a better parent, learn a skill.
Being consistent won't guarantee success, but not being consistent will guarantee that you won't be successful.
So this push and pull that people go through, this concern that they have about starting again at all.
It's the beginning of the year.
Why should I, you know, 80% of New Year's resolutions are already given up by the end of January.
What's even the point of me beginning to do this thing?
Well, because your stick-to-it muscle is something that can be trained.
And over time, yes, this year, maybe you only do make it to February, but next year, maybe you make it to March.
And the year after that, maybe you make it to May.
And that is way better than just admitting defeat.
But yeah, for me, consistency is the one thing that all of the high achievers I've spoken to have got.
But I am waiting.
I am looking forward to the Douglas Murray Fitness.
plan to come out eventually, which I've been promised at some point will be dropping.
And every new year I look for it and it's not here.
That's a long stretch ambition for a lot of people.
But what role does money play in happiness, do you think?
Many people spend their whole lives pursuing it.
Many people end up not doing what they wanted to do with their lives because they're chasing to be richer or chasing for a pay increase.
What role?
Do you think money does actually make people happy?
I think that being rich might not guarantee happiness, but being poor is probably a pretty good predictor of being miserable.
That there are certain material circumstances which are going to be imposed on you.
Like being in poverty is such a huge stressor for people.
You get trapped because all of your time is spent trying to deal with the problem of poverty or being poor.
And that means that you don't have any time to do anything else, which traps you in poverty.
So this is why you get to those who have more, more will be given, and to those who have less, less, more will be taken.
That's why that dynamic occurs.
I think that people should endeavor to get themselves to be comfortable.
I do think that that's important.
And it's an uncomfortable ground truth of reality.
But once you've got there, chasing more and more and more money doesn't guarantee that you're going to be happy.
I know a lot of people that are super rich and way more miserable than my friends who aren't.
Now, I've got to ask you one final question, Marcel.
Have you?
You sent out a tweet today about a quite appallingly graphic type of personal injury which the male of the species can apparently suffer, particularly during the Christmas period.
We're all safely out of that now.
But can I just ask you on that subject, sex, love, where does that fit in?
I thought you were going to ask me about that very specific.
Yeah, I can't actually go into the details because this is the family show.
Good.
I'm glad.
I think that there is a current anti-relationship culture.
I think that men and women are increasingly seeing each other as adversaries, as enemies, and they're not.
They're collaborators.
They should and do work very well together.
And I think that you don't need a relationship to live a happy life, but it definitely helps.
And not prioritizing it is a high-risk strategy.
And sex?
Sex, as much of it as possible, ideally.
As much as possible?
Well, you know, when you're not on Piers Morgan Live, hosted by Douglas Murray.
But as you know, but presumably, just quickly, I mean, you also mean, I mean, sort of playing the game, I think a lot of, you know, a lot of evidence shows isn't necessarily the way to happiness.
No, of course not.
Of course, you don't need to have as much as possible.
But I do think there's some interesting studies that have been come out that have been released that say the amount of sex that you want to have is around about satisfaction and then a little bit more than the friends that are around you.
If you are having a little bit less sex than the friends that are around you, it seems like you can quite highly predict whether someone will be dissatisfied with their sex life.
So perhaps become friends with a bunch of priests or eunuchs and then you'll feel satisfied with your sex life no matter how much you're having.
Well, Chris, thank you for joining us.
And I certainly hope very much that you never suffer that particular personal Christmas injury you told us all about, which is going to haunt me for the rest of the year.
Thank you, Chris Williamson.
Now, that's it from me tonight.
Whatever you're up to, make sure it's uncensored.
Good night.
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